The Secret Service had already been under investigation by House Oversight Committee Republicans for several months when a bullet came within inches of killing former President Trump, killed a bystander, and injured at least two others at a rally in Pennsylvania Saturday afternoon.
Even though Trump and his family members credited the special agents and a counter sniper assigned to his protective detail with saving his life and possibly many others, recriminations against the Secret Service started almost immediately after the assassination attempt.
Americans could see for themselves how the agents and officers traveling with Trump on Saturday acted heroically, falling on the former president after his right ear was pierced by a bullet and returning heavy caliber gunfire, killing the 20-year-old shooter, Thomas Crooks. But questions remain over how Crooks managed to perch on a nearby rooftop and come within inches of killing Trump, renewing past criticisms of the once-vaunted agency with a troubled history of security lapses, employee misconduct, and uneven discipline practices.
Rep. James Comer, who chairs the House Committee on Oversight and Accountability, has called on Secret Service Director Kimberly Cheatle to testify at a hearing on Monday, July 22.
“Americans demand answers about the assassination attempt of President Trump,” Comer tweeted Saturday night.
In a letter to Cheatle, Comer was far more laudatory of the agency’s actions.
“The tremendous bravery of the individual United States Secret Service agents who protected President Trump eliminated the gunman, and possibly averted more loss of life cannot be overstated,” he said.
In late May, as RealClearPolitics first reported, Comer’s committee had launched an investigation into a previous incident that took place in April involving a female Secret Service agent, tasked with protecting Vice President Kamala Harris, who was removed from her duties after suffering an apparent mental breakdown and attacking superior agents.
The incident took place just before Harris was set to depart Joint Base Andrews, the home base for Air Force One and Air Force Two, the call signs of the Boeing aircraft used by the president and vice president. (Harris had not arrived at the airport when the altercation took place.)
After Saturday’s attempted assassination, when live images of Trump clutching a bloody ear and raising his fist in defiance appeared on cable news and social media, critics began to question why Secret Service snipers didn’t fire sooner amid reports that onlookers were pointing to Crooks, who was positioned and crawling on a nearby roof, before the shots rang out.
A source within the Secret Service community tells RCP that the agency’s rules of engagement in this situation are to wait until the president is fired upon to return fire.
“You want to take a shot then find out the guy was holding a telescope?” the source asked. “The Secret Service is by nature reactive … and you better be right when you do react or you’re f-----d.”
The Secret Service protocol requires that any counter sniper aware of a potential shooter must radio directly to the intelligence division team to respond and investigate. In this case, the investigation may have been cut short by the shooter firing his weapon, so the counter sniper then fired as quickly as possible in return.
The source praised the counter sniper who acquired the target and responded within three seconds, calling their performance “incredible.”
“The counter snipers are highly trained and extremely accurate,” he said.
Others with law enforcement and military backgrounds want to know whether the Secret Service utilized drones to provide detailed situational awareness and, if they didn’t, why that decision was made. The use of drones has been a controversial issue within the agency since at least 2016, the source told RCP. Implementing drones would have provided detailed line-of-site analysis and aerial surveillance that would have easily identified the rooftop as a potential threat area.
“The USSS has access to all the best imagery and elevation data,” the military expert told RCP. “I’m not saying they didn’t [use drones], but it’s an open question.”
Other critics, including conservative media personality Dan Bongino, a former senior special agent in the Secret Service who is close to Trump, his family, and top advisers, have asserted that the agency officials denied requests for more security from Secret Service supervisors on Trump’s protective detail.
Secret Service spokesman Anthony Guglielmi denied that such a request and denial took place.
“There’s an untrue assertion that a member of the former President’s team requested additional security resources & that those were rebuffed,” Guglielmi posted late Saturday night on X.com. “This is absolutely false. In fact, we added protective resources & technology & capabilities as part of the increased campaign travel tempo.”
The FBI, another agency buffeted by bad publicity – in particular, evidence of anti-Trump animus at the top levels – has taken over the investigation into the attempted assassination against Trump. Special agents of the FBI Pittsburgh Field Office responded “immediately” after the shooting, the agency said in a statement.
“We will continue to support this investigation with the full resources of the FBI, alongside our partners at the U.S. Secret Service and the state and local enforcement,” the FBI said.
The Secret Service lost some of its former respect after a string of fence-jumping incidents, other security lapses, and discipline issues came to light during the Obama administration. At the beginning of the Trump administration, a senior special agent in the Secret Service came under fire for suggesting in a Facebook post that she wouldn’t “take a bullet” for Trump. Kerry O’Grady, the former agent in question, was placed on administrative leave but was allowed to retire with full benefits and her security clearance intact.
Others fired from the agency over discipline issues have lost their security clearances and at least part of their retirement benefits, spurring resentment among some in the Secret Service community.
This is the problem that my Secret Sources have cited: Secret Services resources were diverted to Jill Biden's event and away from Trump's because they followed agency protocol applying to Trump as a former president, according to two sources within the Secret Service community.… pic.twitter.com/9MzmS6Bia7
— Susan Crabtree (@susancrabtree) July 14, 2024
The agency, more recently, has come under scrutiny for its diversity, equity, and inclusion policies after the female agent’s apparent mental breakdown at Joint Base Andrews.
An agency spokesman called the issue a “medical incident,” but other members of the Secret Service launched a petition over the agency’s DEI hiring and vetting policies during the Biden administration, as first reported by RCP.
Cheatle, in 2021, signed onto a new initiative to increase the number of women in the Secret Service workforce. The agency is one of numerous federal, state, and local law enforcement agencies that have signed onto the 30x30 initiative, an effort to increase the representation of women in all ranks of policing across the country to 30% of the workforce by 2030.
In early May, Guglielmi rejected claims that the DEI policy impacted agency readiness.
“Claims that the Secret Service’s standards have been lowered as a result of our signing this pledge are categorically false,” Guglielmi told RCP. Comer held his first briefing with Secret Service officials over that April incident on June 24. Afterward, an Oversight Committee spokesperson said the briefing was “thorough,” but “questions remain regarding recruiting, vetting, training and morale at the agency.”
“The USSS provided the Committee on Friday a thorough briefing for staff, and we appreciate their time and ongoing cooperation as we continue to conduct oversight to ensure the Secret Service is fulfilling its mission,” the spokesperson told RCP. Questions remain regarding recruiting, vetting, training, and morale at the agency and the Committee looks forward to receiving additional information from the agency soon.”
In addition, after the attempted assassination of Trump Saturday night, conservatives on social media blasted Rep. Bennie Thompson, the ranking Democrat on the House Homeland Security Committee, for earlier this year introducing a bill co-sponsored by several other Democrats that would have denied Secret Service protection to Trump if he were convicted of a felony. The measure never gained traction in the GOP-controlled House. The Secret Service falls under the Department of Homeland Security.
After the attempted assassination, which killed one innocent spectator and injured at least two others, Thompson tweeted that he is “glad that the former president is safe” and is “grateful for law enforcement’s fast response.”
Susan Crabtree is RealClearPolitics' national political correspondent.
